In Vilnius, Lithuania, a controversy unfolds over whether to convert a Soviet Sports Palace into a European Convention Center, or whether to restore the Jewish cemetery which the Soviets desecrated there. We take the opportunity to analyze the origins of related self-definitions, decisions, positions and questions which matter for various self-identities: the Soviet government, Soviet Lithuanian architects, real estate developers, post-Soviet Lithuanians, anti-Soviet Lithuanians, post-anti-Soviet Lithuanians, the Lithuanian government, the Lithuanian Jewish community's official leaders, orthodox Lithuanian Jews and local residents.

We illustrate how self-identity gets extended with 12 different contexts:

rejecting a context, acknowledging it conditionally, and allowing for parallel contexts.

We describe some of the "equations" by which these contexts are further composed. We look for parallels with universal constructs in natural language and explore how these constructs (such as the distinction between nouns, verbs and modifiers) might arise from a grammar of self-identity which defines why and how we identify with issues, why and how they matter to us or not.

We note especially that peace is the healthy reference point for Why we should act? We can then study our emotions as deviations from peace which clarify for us the boundary between our self and our world, and also reveal whether we are expecting what we truly wish. Architect Christopher Alexander calls this peace "the quality without a name". His pattern languages foster it, and his 15 properties of life enhance it. We show that 3 of these properties (strong centers, strong boundaries, levels of scale) are manifested by the other 12, which match with our 12 contexts which extend self-identity. Adding contexts tell us How do we behave? but removing them tells us Why do we behave? We can care even when we can't take action, and thus the behavioral question, How do we behave? is incomplete without the additional moral question, How should we behave?

Evolution of Self-Identity in the Intercultural Debate on Whether to Restore Vilnius's Oldest Jewish Cemetery.

My Topic

Introduce the problem: How Do Things Come to Matter? as applied to the particular case of restoring Vilnius's Oldest Jewish Cemetery. Why won't we empathize with Jews? The question of how empathy can arise, and how identity can be changed?

The answer is that it is not our old identity or new identity that matters but our true identity is our readiness to let go of our identity.

Will share some tentative ideas.

Will start with some insights from this practical issue. Will consider them in terms of culture, communication and cognition. And then will return with some concluding insights.

Static Caring (Solutions): Concerns as Patterns

Draw a map of the many points of view. Can think of a "concern" in terms of

How our identity is related to our points of view.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, a controversy unfolds over whether to convert a Soviet Sports Palace into a European Convention Center, or whether to restore the Jewish cemetery which the Soviets desecrated there. We take the opportunity to analyze the origins of related self-definitions, decisions, positions and questions which matter for various self-identities: the Soviet government, Soviet Lithuanian architects, real estate developers, post-Soviet Lithuanians, anti-Soviet Lithuanians, post-anti-Soviet Lithuanians, the Lithuanian government, the Lithuanian Jewish community's official leaders, orthodox Lithuanian Jews and local residents.

Christopher Alexander's pattern language - a pattern or solution.

Consider the pattern on four different levels. Note that self-definition is impossible to change but questions are easy to change.

Alexander also gives wholeness or peace as a clue. Define peace in terms of emotions.

The human condition for individuals will always be different. In our culture, we can grow to share and overlap in our activities. But we can share a symbol - like the view of the cemetery from Gediminas's castle - although we can identify with it from our own personal perspective. A symbol can unite opposing perspectives.

Peace - Letting Go of One Self

Our emotional life defines the boundary between our self and our world. Peace - the lack of expectations - is the absence of distinction between what we know well and what we don't know well - it is the ability to leave not knowing - to let go of our knowledge, let go of our values.

We can then study our emotions as deviations from peace which clarify for us the boundary between our self and our world, and also reveal whether we are expecting what we truly wish.

So we won't let go of what we identify with our self - we need to have it be more distant before we can change - then we can lock it back in.

Now consider how identity is locked in or let go of.

Freedom of defining our self! specify this... we are not entrenched (implicit) but we are the peace in the explicit - we are revealed - we lay ourselves down and we pick ourselves back up again

Paradox

We don't know but we are creatures of knowing

We use our deepest value to make our way forward - we take a stand, follow through, and reflect

But is our deepest value correct? No! So we keep adjusting it with questions.

Freedom to correct ourselves is the freedom to go astray. How do we and how should we behave.

So people of many different values - personal cultures.

Growth Experiences - Letting Go of Old Self to Take Up New Self - Complement to Self

Communication: Collected meaningful experiences - where I grew - for improv comedy. Change in self-identity: old self, new self and complement-to-self. Example of Lacie Diaz. (Relate instead to my experience of Litvak culture?)

One-time events

Importance of letting go of one's self.

Six different types of growth - and my art project God's Face.

Six questions for sharpening one's deepest value.

Consider the six (of eight) questions that sharpen values (from the Eightfold Way) and relate them to the six experiences. Three ask How to apply a value: at all, for oneself, and more broadly, and three ask Why the value does not exist, we don't live it, we don't think it? This is 3+3 whereas the kinds of concerns is given by +2. In either case, we can think of the old self giving rise to the new self by way of the opposite self. On the one hand, this gives three positives and three negatives. But on the other hand, we can interpret this as one old positive, one new positive, and four others - the negative ones and the positive present - yielding 2+4.

Concerns:Kinds of mistakes that we can make

Properties of signs - requirements of patterns - names of the "quality without a name"

Duality of language

Coordinating activity vs. building assemblies

Reducing vagueness

Divisions of everything

We are attached to assemblies - to particular perspectives - but let go by considering the overall frameworks.

The difference is that the implicit three-cycle is not negatable whereas the explicit threesome is negated. And the latter gives the six types of growth.

Furthermore, the relationship between activity and self, what is not and what is.

Thus the three-cycle locks in the self and the explicit threesome lets us let go and then we can lock it in again.

The types of experiences are based on necessary-actual-possible understood both positively and negatively, whereas being-doing-thinking cannot be negated.

The implicit "fate" of our self - and the explicit "freedom" of our self - we can identify with being or not-being - with self or love - with one or all.

This identification takes place by way of a map from content to form. Mapping the threesome content (poslinkis in the three-cycle) onto form (būtinas-tikras-galimas). The map can be onto the positive or onto the negative. And with regard to what is, or what is not.

Purposes of Art and Rules for Art

12 purposes of art - stepping out

Coming from a sense of peace - healthy art vs. unhealthy art

We note especially that peace is the healthy reference point for Why we should act?

Architect Christopher Alexander calls this peace "the quality without a name".

finding the nullsome - healthy

then playing the mind game - immersing

12 rules of art - 12 principles of life - stepping in

His pattern languages foster it, and his 15 properties of life enhance it. We show that 3 of these properties (strong centers, strong boundaries, levels of scale) are manifested by the other 12, which match with our 12 contexts which extend self-identity.

Stepping out into peace, then stepping in to be riled by life.

Adding contexts tell us How do we behave? but removing them tells us Why do we behave? We can care even when we can't take action, and thus the behavioral question, How do we behave? is incomplete without the additional moral question, How should we behave? What is our self? What do we choose our self to be - all or separate?

One-time activity

One-time activity is the relating of recurring activity, old and new.

Change in Self-Identity - Challenge: trying to make sense of the equations

A workshop on changes in self-identity gave equations built from these building blocks.

The 12 circumstances are the same as the building blocks for self-identity.

An example of an equation from our lives...

Identifying with a vantage point (our own or somebody else's) between the old self and the new self.

rejecting a context, acknowledging it conditionally, and allowing for parallel contexts.

We describe some of the "equations" by which these contexts are further composed.

Activity as basis for language

We look for parallels with universal constructs in natural language and explore how these constructs (such as the distinction between nouns, verbs and modifiers) might arise from a grammar of self-identity which defines why and how we identify with issues, why and how they matter to us or not.

Active Caring (Problems): Caring and Maturing

Caring as an activity by which we relate our self with our self. A workshop on what we care about.

If we can only go beyond ourselves into ourselves: How we escape ourselves, go beyond ourselves: Identifying ourselves with the activity of transforming ourselves.

Our episodes of maturing as what God cares about - the sense of peace and wholeness

Ambiguity important - we care (stepped in) but also God cares (stepped out) through us - and we mature

Converting concerns, old and new, into one-time growth experiences which link them.

Survey

Pro-Litvak point of view: Jews as victims - Reactive (stepping out) vs. pro-Lithuanian point of view: Lithuanians as former and potential perpetrators - Proactive (stepping in). Need both points of view - and a shift in the point of view - transform from the pro-Litvak point of view to the pro-Lithuanian point of view.

Pro-Litvaks believe that Jews are hurt and vulnerable. But they don't emphasize this.

Conclusion

Jonas Mekas problem and solution... but people value information - knowing Jews, information stands, - this may be superficial but it is precisely that which lets people let go of their own self and define themselves one way or the other - the real problem is ignorance? The crucil point is the ability to ask questions - to not know - the significnance of the world and the source of peace. Questioning - engaging the truth. Our ability to live amongst knowledge. The knowledge that there are Jews.

Introduce the problem: How Do Things Come to Matter? as applied to the particular case of restoring Vilnius's Oldest Jewish Cemetery. Why won't we empathize with Jews? The question of how empathy can arise, and how identity can be changed?

The answer is that it is not our old identity or new identity that matters but our true identity is our readiness to let go of our identity.

Will share some tentative ideas. Will consider them in terms of culture, communication and cognition.

Paradox

We don't know but we are creatures of knowing

We use our deepest value to make our way forward - we take a stand, follow through, and reflect

But is our deepest value correct? No! So we keep adjusting it with questions.

So people of many different values - personal cultures.

Static Caring (Solutions): Concerns as Patterns

Draw a map of the many points of view. Can think of a "concern" in terms of Christopher Alexander's pattern language - a pattern or solution.

Consider the pattern on four different levels. Note that self-definition is impossible to change but questions are easy to change.

Pattern: view from Gediminas castle

Pattern: cherish spiritual capital (Hill of Crosses)

Alexander also gives wholeness or peace as a clue. Define peace in terms of emotions.

Peace - Letting Go of One Self

Our emotional life defines the boundary between our self and our world. Peace - the lack of expectations - is the absence of distinction between what we know well and what we don't know well - it is the ability to leave not knowing - to let go of our knowledge, let go of our values.

So we won't let go of what we identify with our self - we need to have it be more distant before we can change - then we can lock it back in.

Now consider how identity is locked in or let go of.

Freedom of defining our self! specify this... we are not entrenched (implicit) but we are the peace in the explicit - we are revealed - we lay ourselves down and we pick ourselves back up again

Growth Experiences - Letting Go of Old Self to Take Up New Self - Complement to Self

Communication: Collected meaningful experiences - where I grew - for improv comedy. Change in self-identity: old self, new self and complement-to-self. Example of Lacie Diaz. (Relate instead to my experience of Litvak culture?) Importance of letting go of one's self.

The difference is that the implicit three-cycle is not negatable whereas the explicit threesome is negated. And the latter gives the six types of growth.

Furthermore, the relationship between activity and self, what is not and what is.

Thus the three-cycle locks in the self and the explicit threesome lets us let go and then we can lock it in again.

Purposes of Art and Rules for Art

12 purposes of art - stepping out

12 rules of art - 12 principles of life - stepping in

Change in Self-Identity - Challenge: trying to make sense of the equations

A workshop on changes in self-identity gave equations built from these building blocks.

The 12 circumstances are the same as the building blocks for self-identity.

Active Caring (Problems): Caring and Maturing

Caring as an activity by which we relate our self with our self. A workshop on what we care about.

If we can only go beyond ourselves into ourselves: How we escape ourselves, go beyond ourselves: Identifying ourselves with the activity of transforming ourselves.

Our episodes of maturing as what God cares about - the sense of peace and wholeness

Gamestorming

Process of commitment

Specifically turning the view around

Implicit and explicit

Survey

Reactive (stepping out) vs. Proactive (stepping in)

Conclusion

Jonas Mekas problem and solution... but people value information - knowing Jews, information stands, - this may be superficial but it is precisely that which lets people let go of their own self and define themselves one way or the other - the real problem is ignorance? The crucil point is the ability to ask questions - to not know - the significnance of the world and the source of peace. Questioning - engaging the truth. Our ability to live amongst knowledge. The knowledge that there are Jews.

The human condition for individuals will always be different. In our culture, we can grow to share and overlap in our activities. But we can share a symbol - like the view of the cemetery from Gediminas's castle - although we can identify with it from our own personal perspective. A symbol can unite opposing perspectives.

Mapping the threesome content (poslinkis in the three-cycle) onto form (būtinas-tikras-galimas). The map can be onto the positive or onto the negative. And with regard to what is, or what is not.

The types of experiences are based on necessary-actual-possible understood both positively and negatively, whereas being-doing-thinking cannot be negated.

Consider the six (of eight) questions that sharpen values (from the Eightfold Way) and relate them to the six experiences. Three ask How to apply a value: at all, for oneself, and more broadly, and three ask Why the value does not exist, we don't live it, we don't think it? This is 3+3 whereas the kinds of concerns is given by +2. In either case, we can think of the old self giving rise to the new self by way of the opposite self. On the one hand, this gives three positives and three negatives. But on the other hand, we can interpret this as one old positive, one new positive, and four others - the negative ones and the positive present - yielding 2+4.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, a controversy unfolds over whether to convert a Soviet Sports Palace into a European Convention Center, or whether to restore the Jewish cemetery which the Soviets desecrated there. We take the opportunity to analyze the origins of related self-definitions, decisions, positions and questions which matter for various self-identities: the Soviet government, Soviet Lithuanian architects, real estate developers, post-Soviet Lithuanians, anti-Soviet Lithuanians, post-anti-Soviet Lithuanians, the Lithuanian government, the Lithuanian Jewish community's official leaders, orthodox Lithuanian Jews and local residents.

We illustrate how self-identity gets extended with 12 different contexts:

rejecting a context, acknowledging it conditionally, and allowing for parallel contexts.

We describe some of the "equations" by which these contexts are further composed. We look for parallels with universal constructs in natural language and explore how these constructs (such as the distinction between nouns, verbs and modifiers) might arise from a grammar of self-identity which defines why and how we identify with issues, why and how they matter to us or not.

We note especially that peace is the healthy reference point for Why we should act? We can then study our emotions as deviations from peace which clarify for us the boundary between our self and our world, and also reveal whether we are expecting what we truly wish. Architect Christopher Alexander calls this peace "the quality without a name". His pattern languages foster it, and his 15 properties of life enhance it. We show that 3 of these properties (strong centers, strong boundaries, levels of scale) are manifested by the other 12, which match with our 12 contexts which extend self-identity. Adding contexts tell us How do we behave? but removing them tells us Why do we behave? We can care even when we can't take action, and thus the behavioral question, How do we behave? is incomplete without the additional moral question, How should we behave?